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Because the case is being filed with the federal government, these actions could have implications for school districts everywhere—and there is already plenty of data tying charter schools to segregation.

Charter schools are often promoted as a tool to address educational inequities, but a potential precedent-setting legal case launched earlier this month says the opposite. In filings with the U.S. Department of Education, two Delaware nonprofit groups allege that some of the state's publicly funded, privately managed schools are actively resegregating the education system—and in a way that violates federal civil rights law.

The complaint, by the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Community Legal Aid Society, cites data showing that more than three-quarters of Delaware's charter schools are “racially identifiable”—a term that describes schools whose demographics are substantially different from the surrounding community.

According to the complaint, “High-performing charter schools are almost entirely racially identifiable as white” while “low-income students and students with disabilities are disproportionately relegated to failing charter schools and charter schools that are racially identifiable as African-American or Hispanic.”

The groups are asking the Obama administration to take specific steps, including prohibiting subjective admissions policies for charter schools and barring extra fees for attending charter schools—factors they say discriminate against low-income, disabled and minority students.

Because the case is being filed with the federal government, these actions could have implications for school districts everywhere—and there is already plenty of data tying charter schools to segregation.

In 2010, a University of Colorado report analyzing charter schools found that “as compared with the public school district in which the charter school resided, the charter schools were substantially more segregated by race, wealth, disabling condition and language.” Similarly, in reviewing a decade worth of research about charter schools, George Washington University education researcher Iris Rotberg earlier this year concluded that “charter schools often lead to increased school segregation … and lead to the stratification of students who were previously in integrated environments.”

The causes of educational segregation are a point of debate. Charter school defenders, for example, argue that the trends may merely reflect geography.

“A naive examination … appears to show that the critics are right: More choice is associated with minority students attending less diverse schools,” wrote the Brookings Institution's Matthew M. Chingos in his 2013 study of education data. “Of course, this relationship ignores the fact that charters tend to locate in areas that serve large shares of disadvantaged students and members of minority groups. As a result, this simple correlation tells us nothing about whether charters increase segregation or just tend to locate in areas where the schools are already segregated.”

“These requirements include high examination scores, essays written by parents to explain why a school is a good choice for their child, access to gifted and talented elementary and middle school programs that help increase academic performance, annual activities fees, mandatory parent involvement and mandatory high-cost uniform purchases,” the ACLU said in a statement announcing the complaint. “Such barriers prevent students from low-income African-American and Hispanic families from having the same access to high-quality charter schools that middle- and upper-class families have.”

In May, the Department of Education warned charter school administrators that their admissions policies “may not use admissions criteria that have the effect of excluding students on the basis of race, color or national origin.”

That warning was issued almost exactly 60 years after the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling that began officially desegregating America's schools. In those six decades, much progress has been made on civil rights—but the trends documented in Delaware show there is still a long way to go.

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David Sirota, an In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist, is a staff writer at PandoDaily and a bestselling author whose book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything was released in 2011. Sirota, whose previous books include The Uprising and Hostile Takeover, co-hosts "The Rundown" on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

Till now this is a questions of racism and other hullabaloos regarding this which is very much shameful along with imperative in terms of understanding and mixing up with the others in general. Education should be the criteria to make it prospective as well as fruitful to all who are very much in danger or problem. In that sense equal opportunity along with the proposition is needed to make the project of ignoring disparity is baseless. Also essay writing services reviews given.Therefore proper justifications should start in order to make the education worth for all.

Posted by Sid on 2015-02-25 12:42:07

Mr. Sirota, are you going to cover the law suit that has been filed in NYC against the exclusive quasi private magnet schools that have very small percentages of low income students and students of color because they use standardized tests to determine who is admitted? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09...

How do you feel about district schools that screen out students who can't score very well on standardized tests? I'm opposed to this practice, whether it's done by magnet schools or charter public schools. Joe Nathan, parent of 3 graduates of St. Paul Public Schools, educator and former PTA President.

Posted by Mnparent on 2014-12-14 09:18:42

Another current law suit has challenged the exclusive “public schools” in New York City, similar to those in Chicago, that use standardized tests to help determine who is admitted. One of the reasons we have charter laws is that some of us strongly disagree with allowing k-12 public schools to use admissions tests. Most charter laws prohibit this. I wish they all did.

As to the ACLU, which has helped file the Delaware law suit – it’s fascinating what they sides they take. They defend Nazis marching through heavily Jewish areas, and are challenging the charter law that allows low income African Americans (in Delaware) to select schools that they think make sense for their youngsters.

Bill Wilson, first African American city council member in St Paul, Mn was forced to attend inferior schools in Indiana when he was a child because of his race. In this column, published in Minnesota’s largest daily newspaper, he and I distinguish between force to attend an inferior school because of race, and being allowed to select among various schools.